


Breakfast Disaster

by badlifechoices



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Nat is an angel, Pancakes, clint is really bad at making pancakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 05:51:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3435809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badlifechoices/pseuds/badlifechoices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt: Bucky finds out Clint sucks at making pancakes and immediately seeks to remedy this</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakfast Disaster

**Author's Note:**

> this is an old thing I wrote for a fanfic exchange with dreamingangelwolf but forgot to upload it here

The kitchen was once again crowded with Avengers and with all of them talking at once it was pretty damn impossible to understand a single word that was uttered, safe for Thor’s booming voice that demanded pop tarts. Basically it was the same thing that happened every single morning in the Avengers Tower and Bucky could see how his boyfriend slowly lost it. Everybody knew, or everybody should know that Clint needed his coffee in the morning more than any of the others who were stuffed into the kitchen area probably and Bucky would rather spend his days with Natasha, who still didn’t like him –and not being liked by Natasha is definitely the worst considering she was his boyfriend’s BFF and one of the most lethal creatures on the planet – than with Clint when he was in a bad mood. And Clint usually had the worst of moods when he didn’t get his caffeine in the morning. The only one more affected by the whole hubbub was probably Bruce who did his best to control the giant green rage monster in his head, a task that wasn’t exactly easy when being surrounded by people with no sense of personal space.

It wasn’t until JARVIS reminded them politely that neither Tony nor Thor were actually allowed in the kitchen ever since they had tried to see whether the microwave could be powered with Asgardian magic or not and the whole Tower had been flooded with small explosive creatures in the aftermath of the explosion. Steve, who had solely tagged along because the promise of breakfast had been uttered by someone, was given one of those super sized sandwiches and then escorted out by Natasha.

“You okay?” Bucky watched the man who he had first encountered as the Hulk and who was still standing in the far away corner of the kitchen, gripping the counter as if it was the only thing that still kept him sane. While Bruce managed a small smile, Clint only shrugged and headed over to the coffee machine with a mumbled. ‘How could he be okay with those idiots around?’ Bruce nodded and nervously shifted from one foot onto the other before quietly leaving the kitchen, a cup of tea in one hand and a slice of toast in the other. Bucky tried his best to ignore the way the man circled him, making sure to leave a few feet of space between them as he headed for the exit. None of the others really trusted him by now and he got it. He was the new one, the stranger and being the Winter Soldier, a Russian ex-spy didn’t really help either. Not even Steve, who still followed him around with those puppy-eyes of his sometimes, expecting him to miraculously turn into the Bucky Barnes he knew a century ago, seemed to trust this new him. After he had forbidden Tony to try and upgrade his arm somehow –and maybe he had been a tiny bit harsh in telling the man to mind his own business – the billionaire had kept his distance. Bruce had never spoken a word to him and Natasha, well; Natasha didn’t like him even less than she didn’t trust him.

The only one who accepted him as one of them was Clint. But Clint had also been the one who had been sent to kill him and instead saved him from the Red Room. Clint had been the one to offer him

 

a second chance even when SHIELD didn’t. Clint had been the one he had tried to keep warm in this cave in Siberia when the temperature sunk below zero because the man’s eyes had made him feel desperate to help. Clint was the one who trusted him blind –and he knew that first hand because they had ended up in that situation once and instead of freaking out the archer had simply told him to stay on mission. So even if they were not fucking around like bunnies, as Tony Stark liked to put it, Clint was the only person in the Tower he could hang out with. What didn’t mean that he was ever going to say all the stuff he made up in his mind because he wasn’t that much of a sap. Also he was pretty sure Clint wouldn’t appreciate it.

As they were the only ones left in the kitchen, he stepped closer to his boyfriend who was quietly sipping his first cup of the ridiculously strong coffee he liked so much and wrapped his arms around the other's waist. "'m hungry." he mumbled, his lips brushing the archer's neck when he rested his chin on the slightly smaller man's shoulder. He knew Clint had to be an at least decent cook because he was the only person allowed in the kitchen whenever Natasha cooked and the bacon and eggs he made for breakfast usually tasted only the slightest bit burnt.

"There's toast." And that was Clint for: 'I'm starving but I'm really not in the mood to make something that takes more than two minutes. Also I haven't had enough coffee yet.' Bucky only grinned and tilted his head enough so he could press a sloppy kiss to the soft spot behind the other's ear.

"Urgh. Fuck off already."

"What about pancakes?"

"Huh?"

"You know pancakes. Flat, made of eggs, milk and flour... Good for breakfast or dinner or supper." Bucky had retreated a bit just to make sure Clint didn’t accidentally pour hot coffee over his good hand or something. "Don't tell me you don't know..."

"I know what pancakes are thank you." Clint interrupted him.

"I almost doubted you, man. Let's make some!" Bucky only vaguely remembered anything before he had become the Winter Soldier and he most certainly didn’t remember anything as insignificant as his favourite dish. He had simply discovered in those months he spent on American soil, for once aware of his actions and no longer under the control of the Red Room that he liked pancakes. He liked them a lot. And Steve had only been encouraging him further.

The look on Clint’s face was one of those many unreadable ones Bucky had come to hate during the last weeks. Even though theirs wasn’t exactly the most romantic and loving relationship and they both still had a whole basement full of secrets he had at least tried to get to know the Clint Barton who was right here with him. And whenever he got this dark look there was something he didn’t want to tell. Maybe he should’ve dropped the pancakes thing the moment Clint had showed that he was uncomfortable with it; maybe there was some time in his past he associated with pancakes that was not at all pleasant? But what could it possibly be that made him hate pancakes so much?

“You want them, you make them.” And with that he left the kitchen, the can of coffee still in one hand and the empty mug in the other. Bucky decided to ask whenever the other was in a better mood than right now.

 

\--

 

Bucky almost forgot about the whole pancake affair until he ran into Natasha a few days later. The woman was leaning against the counter in the kitchen, apparently attentively reading something on her STARK Pad but Bucky was very sure she was observing him as carefully as she always did. She probably did both at the same time and he envied her for her multi tasking abilities for a moment. Though he knew that he would probably be a worthy opponent for her in a fight he wasn’t exactly in the mood to bicker with his boyfriend’s best and only real friend so he was about to leave when she actually spoke to him.

“You really like him.” She stated and it really wasn’t a question so he simply shrugged. “He likes you. But I don’t have to trust you because he does. He’s stupid to believe that all people deserve a second chance.”

“He gave you a second chance too.”

“He did. And I’m not saying it was wise of him to do so.” Natasha nodded more to herself before she obviously realised who she was talking to and her face went back to her usual expression void of any actual feelings. “There anything you wanted, Winter Soldier?” She never used his name when they had to talk. She had told him he had been the one to train him back at the Red Room but he didn’t remember ever meeting her before she had jumped out of that Helicopter, gun drawn and aiming at his head. She hadn’t shot because he had still held their unconscious friend in his arms and she hadn’t known if Clint was still alive or not. She had also known that he could’ve easily killed the archer in his hypothermic and unconscious state.

The moment she was about to leave the room he remembered the conversation from a few days ago and asked: “Hey, do you know what his problem with pancakes is?” Because he wasn’t one to ask behind someone’s back about his secrets but he wanted to know if he trying to find out something here that would get him into serious trouble with his more than just a bit broken boyfriend. Clint never asked about the Winter Soldier, mostly because he knew that Bucky didn’t remember much. But Bucky wanted to know everything about Hawkeye. And it could be because he really was kind of paranoid about the people around him and he had trust issues enough for all of them but maybe because Clint did mean a lot to him and he wanted to protect him from anything that might hurt him, even his past.

“Pancakes? I thought he liked pancakes...”

“He does.” Clint.

Bucky started, turning around to face the one who had spoken the last words only to spot the archer leaning against the doorframe, obviously not amused by them talking about him. The Winter Soldier wasn’t sure if he had surprised both of them or if Natasha had heard him approach. Her face betrayed nothing.

“Then why...”

Clint sighed and rolled his eyes and... was he blushing? The tips of his ears seemed slightly pinker as he glared at his boyfriend. The crinkles around his eyes showed what could only be considered a smile though. “If you laugh at me I will kill you. And I swear this time you won’t get any chance to get away. I won’t even use my arrows I will just choke you to death.”

Bucky nodded, his face serious. “I would never laugh at...”

“I suck at making pancakes.”

“You... what? Everybody knows how to make pancakes. Even Steve can make them and he still has issues with the TV and the ‘ominous voice in the walls’.” Bucky was too surprised to even laugh. The Black Widow though seemed highly amused by their conversation.

“You’re understating the issue, Barton.” It was the first time Bucky saw her grin, not the usual deadly smile but a full grown grin. She turned towards the ex-Russian. “Last time he tried he set the kitchen on fire.” And really that was something Bucky really wanted to see.

“I did not set the kitchen on fire!”

“No of course you didn’t.” Natasha smiled and shrugged. As she left she touched the back of Clint’s hand with two fingers. It was something they did every time and it was barely there; Bucky only noticed it because there was this smile lightening up Clint’s face for a few seconds whenever she did it. He knew it was some kind of code maybe their way of saying that if they needed each other they were only one call away. Maybe it was something they had picked up through working together. Steve had told him that everybody had thought the two of them together until he showed up as Clint’s boyfriend because they were always hanging out. Clint had told him they liked to be close to each other because for a very long time they only had each other and he had seen how tactile both of them were at times. Strangely though he wasn’t all that jealous; probably because the archer had confessed to be into boys as much as Natasha was a BAMF.

Back to topic.

“So... you really don’t know how to make pancakes?”

“If you say it one more time I’m going to throw something pointy at you.”

Bucky couldn’t help the grin that spread over his face, as he stepped closer just as he couldn’t help to tease the other just a tiny bit. He deserved it after having worried so much for nothing!   
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, my love. You know we can always get you professional help.” He pretended to think for a moment but as the look on Clint’s face darkened further, he hurried to add: “So how about I show you how to make pancakes? Let the old man share a few of his secrets with you.”

“ _You_ want to teach _me_ how to make pancakes?”

“Yeah.”

And for a moment Bucky didn’t know if he was going to have to run or fight but then Clint only shrugged. “Why not.”

“Awesome!”

 

They didn’t actually burn down the kitchen. Clint just managed to cover the kitchen floor and the both of them with a thin layer of flour. It wasn’t until Bucky told him to look for some vanilla sugar –just something he had tried out and deemed tasty once – and Clint mixed whatever sugary stuff he found in the cabinet into the dough. Nothing suspicious happened but the moment they poured some of it into the frying pan the whole thing started boiling and sizzling. And not only the dough but the pan too!

It was more of an instinct that had him acting, pulling Clint out of the room and onto the floor with him, as the walls of the kitchen were stained by the flying dough. One of the splashes landed only a few centimetres away from Clint’s face on the floor and Bucky watched as it burnt its way right through the tiles and into whatever room was underneath them.

“What did you put in there?”

“You told me to take the one with the yellow label...” Clint looked at him with the most honest look and Bucky was about to believe him about what he said if it wasn’t for the obviously lethal acid their wonderful pancake dough had turned into.

“Yeah, it was supposed to read ‘vanilla sugar’.”

“Didn’t look.” And of course he didn’t. “You could let me stand up now though, you’re heavier than you look.”

Bucky looked at him for a little longer and it wasn’t until then that he noticed they were actually still lying on the floor and he was protecting Clint with his own body as well as he could. Curious how his instincts had kicked in way faster than his mind did. “Sorry about that.” He mumbled and hurried to get back onto his feet, offering Clint a hand to help him up.

“Wow. I told you I wasn’t good with pancakes.” The kitchen still wasn’t burning. Instead there were tiny holes in the walls and the floor. The frying pan was reduced to a smoking piece of molten metal.

“We better get rid of that before Stark sees any of it...”

“Before Stark sees what?” Why did the people in this building always show up at the wrong time? Bucky wondered if Tony had this sixth sense that told him whenever someone was mentioning him in a conversation because that was usually exactly the moment he decided to show up.

“Whoa, what have you done in there? I didn’t know your lovemaking was so passionate you’re burning down my tower...” And that wasn’t even remotely funny but Stark grinned anyway, staring at the ruined pan from a few feet distance. “You did this and I get banned from the kitchen for doing a bit of science? So not fair!”

It didn’t take long for the other Avengers to show up and Clint simply disappeared out of the room as soon as everybody was busy trying to find out what exactly went wrong. Bucky followed him after a while only to find him in the shooting range in one of the sub-levels. He always spent hours down here when he was agitated or stressed or something was bothering him.

Nobody talked about the pancake incident for a while but Bucky sure as hell didn’t forget about it.

 

\--

 

They decided to try again this time without such a catastrophic outcome.

Clint burnt the pancakes and in the end they were hard enough to kill someone with as Natasha told him. She had been sent to supervise them to make sure something like the last time didn’t happen ever again.

The third time ended with them eating what tasted like the soles of their shoes and Bucky couldn’t explain what Clint could’ve possibly done wrong to have it end up like that.

That was, when he gave up on trying to teach Clint how to make decent pancakes. To be honest he slowly lost his appetite for the things anyway and he would rather make them himself or go to some of those nice little diners to get himself some. If he was ever allowed to leave the tower alone and without SHIELD agents to watch him. But Fury didn’t trust him to go on his own, not without turning the city into a battlefield like he had done it the first time he had come here –Before he had met Clint and left the Red Room behind of course. And so, after a while he forgot all about the issue and learnt to live with the usual Bacon and Eggs in the morning because it tasted decent and he wasn’t one to complain about decent food anyway. He remembered the protein cocktail he had been forced to live on in his time as an assassin for the Russians: Basically, nothing could ever be worse than this, even burnt pancakes...

 

\--

 

A few weeks later, though, he woke up to find himself alone in the large bed. Missing the warmth of the second body underneath the blankets, he sat up instantly, scanning the room for any potential threat and the whereabouts of his partner. He knew there was probably nothing to be worried about because the Tower had the best security systems available on this planet and he would’ve woken up if someone had come here to take Clint, but the fact that the other managed to get up and out of bed without waking him, made him nervous. Well, he knew that he was fucked the moment he realised he had fallen for the archer. But obviously he trusted him enough that all his senses had added Clint as an exception to the ‘no surprises’ rule. It made him vulnerable, weak. But that was the way the old Winter Soldier had been thinking. The old Winter Soldier had killed Clint the moment he found out about him being an American spy and assassin sent to kill him. The new Winter Soldier was different though. The new Winter Soldier saw the whole world as an enemy but Clint was not part of it. He had only come to SHIELD because he didn’t want to be separated from Hawkeye and to stay he let them do all the tests, exams; he even agreed to be held like a dog in a cage. He was still not allowed to leave the Tower alone but at least he was able to accompany Clint on his missions.

The room was empty. So was their whole small apartment.

He took the lift down to the level they shared with the other Avengers only to be surrounded by a heavenly smell. “Clint?” He asked into the large dining room and there was a muffled: “Gimme a sec!” Coming from the kitchen. He followed the sound of the voice and closed in on the origin of that smell that made his mouth water. Before he could enter the kitchen though, Natasha stepped right in front of him, blocking the way.

“He’s not ready yet.” She said, eyes cold and the way she was talking he could as well be preparing for battle and not working on something on the kitchen. So instead of asking any further questions or even forcing his way into the kitchen, he sat down at the large table and waited. He felt just the tiniest bit left out because Natasha got to know what Clint was doing in there but he was the one left alone in their shared bed. He didn’t get the time to mope.

Only minutes later Clint was standing next to the table, a large platter in his hands.

“I, uh, I hope they’re good...” And if Bucky had thought the man had the most adorable frowny face he had never seen this insecure and worried expression before. That one alone made him want to smooth down all of those lines and kiss him until Clint forgot about anything that made him feel like he was less than perfect.

When he looked down at what Clint was holding in his hands though, he was yet again surprised as the platter was filled with the most gorgeous looking pancakes he had ever seen. Okay, they were a tiny bit dark around the edge but otherwise golden and they smelled like heaven itself. “Clint...” he began the very moment Clint murmured something along the lines of: ‘Wait a moment...’ and hurried back into the kitchen. He returned with a knife and fork for him and a cup of coffee filled to the brink, obviously for himself.

“You made these?” Bucky asked, though it came out a bit muffled as his mouth was already stuffed. “They’re perfect!”

Clint shrugged and his ears turned pink once again as he stared into his mug. “’Tasha helped me of course.”

“He spent hours in there. I only told him what to do.” Natasha piped in before leaving them to their conversation. Because no matter how much she didn’t like Bucky, she knew when the right moment to leave was.

“You know... I really think you should make me pancakes more often.”

“Don’t push too hard, Barnes... one day I might poison you more or less accidentally.” Clint tried to keep his face void of expression, obviously copying the threatening look Natasha always put on but Bucky could see the hint of a grin on his lips even before they curled up into an actual smile. “But with the right means you might persuade me to do this again sometime...”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm doing commissions at the moment! http://legolastheprettiestelf.tumblr.com/post/110014768302/fanfic-commissions


End file.
